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We should come up with a list of our favorite pet peeves. As a New Yorker, I am driven to distraction by people who block the subway doors, who have conversations smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk, who walk down the street in threes side-by-side-by-side, who don’t know the golden rule that if you stay the right (walking down the stairs, a corridor, the block) you are right. One of my biggest peeves is sitting near someone on public transportation who is eating hot food. If it’s an untoasted bagel or a buttered roll, I can deal. But if it smells, I squirm. In the morning, it’s not surprising to see someone dogging a heart attack special (ham/bacon, egg and cheese on a roll) or a Cuban sandwich.

Just imagine how uptight I get.

One of the most amusing things about pet peeves is the inclination to think that your friends, family and other like-minded, sane people will share them. One day, I called up my great pal Lizzie Bottoms to rail about food on the train, assuming she’d feel the same way.

I go, “Dude, what’s your reaction when you smell food on the subway?”

“I get hungry.”

I stopped cold. Jeez, I hadn’t thought of that. Makes sense though. Then again Lizzie gets knuts when she sees people smooching and grabbing ass in public (PDA, public display of affection) where that generally doesn’t bug me at all.

Anyhow, I was on the subway this morning. We were still way uptown and the car wasn’t packed yet. An older gentleman sat two seats away from me. He was the kind of guy who looked like he was wearing a toupee even though, on closer inspection, it looked like his real hair.

He broke out a roll. I waited to see if a smell was going to soon follow, indicating that it was something warm. But it wasn’t. Just an plain buttered roll. Soon, a high school kid got on the train and sat between us. The older man asked the kid if he was taking math in school. The kid mumbled a response which evidentally gave the older guy–who, it soon became clear, was not only touched in the head but a math teacher himself–permission to give a uninterrupted lecture on trig, Isaac Newton and all sorts of stuff about math I never wanted to know.

The poor kid didn’t have it in him to tell the guy to shut up, so the old man went on…and on. I put down my book, unable to concentrate. The guy didn’t have any interest in making a connection with the kid, just on hearing the sound of his own voice. I wanted to say something to him and then thought, ah, don’t be such a hard ass, he’s harmless. Still, I was dumbfounded.

Finally, the old man got up and left. I asked the kid if he knew him and he said no. Then I started in about how incredible it is that some people can just go on like that. The kid tuned me out just as he had ignored the old man.

The subway was now downtown. We were stopped at a station and the doors opened and closed several times before the conductor got on the p.a. and said, “Hey, the kid in the back of the train that’s messing around, if you get killed, I get three days off, which is fine by me, so keep it up.”

Bing Bong.

Watch the closing doors.

I caught bits and pieces of the home opener at Shea yesterday and was struck by the backdrop of the new park that is sitting just behind the outfield. Last season, the construction looked like something out of Waterworld, but now the facade of Citi Field looks almost complete. It was a surreal but arresting image, one that has me curious to get out to Shea and see it up close.

Neil deMause, a freelance writer and contributor to Baseball Prospectus, has been following the construction of the two new stadiums in New York. I haven’t been paying close attention to the dollars and cents of it all, but here are three pieces by deMause that detail what’s what ( “>two and three). deMause is unabashedly critical of the financing of both parks, which again brings to mind Robert Lipsyte’s SI story about the rennovation of the old Yankee Stadium, “A Diamond in the Ashes” (April, 1976):

Myles Jackson, a lineman on Michigan’s 1951 Rose Bowl team, was not born in the Bronx, as Abrams and Garelik and I were, but he lives there now, a block from Yankee Stadium. Four years ago, rebuilding himself after a business failure, he found an inexpensive apartment in the neighborhood, which is basically commercial and industrial. The Bronx Terminal Market is nearby, and the Bronx County Courthouse stands on the highest hill.

Sometimes Jackson spent a dollar to sit in the bleachers. I have done that, too, and it can be a soothing place, as public or private as one might need it to be, a sun deck, a gambling casino, a patio from which to see green, a tree house of old August fantasies.

And sometimes Jackson went to jog in Macombs Dam Park, which includes a football field ringed with a cinder track that lies literally in the shadow of the Stadium. The track was poorly maintained by the city; it was often unusable. When the Stadium was closed for renovation after the 1973 baseball season and the little park deteriorated even more, Jackson became angry enough to found a local organization called the Committee to Save Macombs Dam Park.

“Yankee Stadium is a symbol of the value system by which this city, this country, bases its decisions,” he says. “They can spend all that money for a stadium, but when it comes to a little more for a recreational facility that will really enhance the quality of life through sports, there’s just nothing left.”

But symbols and chemistry are the name of the game, whether your city is New York or someplace else, whether your game is baseball or some other sport. The “new” Yankee Stadium is not the all-weather, all-purpose facility New York needs. But as an example of the state of the art of cosmetic architecture, it is a handsome improvement. When I take my son to his first major league game, it will be in a brighter, airier, more comfortable ball park. The pillars that obscured the view of too many of the old 65,000 seats are gone, replaced by a steel cable-counterweight system of the type used to support suspension bridges. Gone will be that chilling dankness of Giant football Sunday afternoons, when the pillars cast late-fall shadows on the seats behind them. Of course, gone, too, are the Giants (to New Jersey), and gone are 11,000 seats, a million baseball seats per season.

…Perhaps the most luxurious new appointments are the 19 private lounges, complete with televisions, wet bars and bathrooms, that open onto 14—and in two cases, 30—reserved seats in the second deck behind home plate. The larger lounges go for $30,000 per season, the others for $19,000. The first was rented by the Yankees’ principal owner, George Steinbrenner III, recently returned to active participation after his suspension from baseball following his felony conviction for illegal Presidential campaign contributions.

Ironically, one of Steinbrenner’s first public actions since his comeback was the edict last month that in the interest of “order and discipline” players may not wear beards or long hair. “I want to develop pride in the players as Yankees,” Steinbrenner explained.

Yankee Pride costs a pretty penny. And it ain’t so cheap out in Queens neither.

Yo, I’m a total nerd. I don’t mind if people call me a nerd because I was never really a dorkasorous dweeb when I was growing up, so I can embrace the label without any personal scars. (The folks that tend to bristle at that label really were nerds and were ostrasized because of it back in their high school days.) One nerdy thing I love doing is hiding out in the microfilm room of the New York Public Library on 42nd street, scrolling through old magazines. On that note, I was geeked to find that I made the NY Public Library’s most recent newsletter.

Oh, and I just had to give a shout out to one of our most loyal readers (and commentors): Happy Birthday to our man Chyll Will.

Show of hands, how many of you out there were excited to see Joba Chamberlain enter the game with two runners on and nobody out in the seventh inning? Joba struck Willy Aybar out on three pitches, including a fastball that hit 101 mph on the scoreboard radar gun. According to Sean Brennan in the Daily News:

Did Chamberlain think his triple-digit fastball got into Aybar’s head?

“I think a little bit,” Chamberlain said. “But you can’t rely on that because then you get too complacent and you leave one over (the plate) and it doesn’t matter how hard you throw to these guys. They can come in 101 and it’s going to leave at 140 and go about 500 feet.”

…In all it took Chamberlain 16 pitches to nail down six outs, and the righthander seems to have grasped the notion that low pitch counts may be more effective than logging strikeouts.

“I’m probably a little smarter,” Chamberlain said. “I’m still young and dumb sometimes but that works for me. I just try to attack the zone and be aggressive. I’m a little more experienced (though), not necessarily any smarter.”

Leave the smarts to Joe G, son, everything else will fall into place.

The Yankees did not hit much on Sunday rounding off a lackluster first week for the offense. However, Joe Girardi was back in the dugout to watch Chien Ming Wang, Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera combine to shut the Rays down and out, 2-0. Hideki Matsui’s two-run homer was the only scoring in the game (batting behind Alex Rodriguez, Godzilla had three hits in all). James Shields pitched well for Tampa, featuring a diving change up that struck Bobby Abreu out three times. Wang was in fine form as well–his pitches were moving, he had good control, and his slider was particularly effective. It wasn’t a great game–a sloppy fielding play by Robinson Cano (who later redeemed himself with a nifty double play), a botched suicide squeeze by the Rays–but it was played in just under three hours, good thing for the fans who braved the chilly and windy conditions. The Yanks are now 3-3 on the season, and look to salvage a split of this four-game series tomorrow.

I can never remember a time in my childhood when my family didn’t get the New York Times on Sunday morning. One time, when I was about nine and my dad was still living with us he sent me on my bike to get the paper. I had a heavy-framed, second-hand dirt bike that Kevin O’Conner was kind enough to dump on me for $25. I peddled over a mile to the local grocery store and then struggled to balance the bulky paper on the handle bars of the bike as I wobbled back home. I was so pleased with myself when I made it back that I brought the paper straight into my parents’ bedroom. My father was sleeping on his back. I carefully placed the paper on his swollen belly like Indiana Jones replacing a gold headstone in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I thought it would be the best way he could ever get the paper–just wake up and have it there waiting for him. He jolted up and yelled at me to get the damn paper off of him.

I always had to wait until dad was finished with a section–the sports section, in most cases–before I had a chance to read it. Or if I read a section before him, I had to make sure that I returned it to the state it was in when I found it. During those final years when my father lived with us not only did I read the stat leaders on Sunday (the one that was available just once a week) but I cut out the full-page movie ads in the Arts and Leisure section. I still remember the print ads for Altered States, The Competition, Fame, The Shinning, Times Square, Popeye, All Night Long, So Fine. I learned how to become sharp at finding the “Nina’s” in Hirsfield’s masterful drawings.

The oldest name I know in print is Murray Chass. The Yankees, Times and Chass. I never knew exactly how to pronounce his name but I always remember seeing it. My dad pronounced it CHHHUH’ass, with a thick Semetic, CHHUH. I always said Chase in my head even though I knew it was wrong.

I have a great deal of admiration for all that Chass has accomplished during the course of his career. He’s one of the outstanding newspapermen of the free agency era, specializing in covering the business side of the sport. I haven’t enjoyed his column for several years now but I still have a certain amount of affection for him because he’s the baseball writer I associate with the Times of my childhood. Hey, Ray Negron told me that Chass was the best ball playing sportswriter of his day. Said that Chass really ripped it up in the annual sportswriter’s game back in the seventies. I know that Chass has become a favorite whipping boy on-line these days, and why not? he’s an easy target who is forever adding fuel to the fire. But I sometimes cringe when I see the abuse he takes. It’s his own fault but it doesn’t mean it’s fun to watch.

Chass doesn’t like blogs, though he doesn’t seem to know much about them. He has simply dismissed the genre outright. That’s fine, but I think he sounds foolish. Jon Weisman wrote a terrific post about Chass, the mainstream press and the blogosphere this past week:

My roots are in sports journalism. I had my first story published in the Los Angeles Times in 1986, covered my first major league baseball game in 1987 and was full-time in the profession by the end of 1989, nearly 13 years before I began blogging. I value how hard it is to be a sportswriter, and I emphasized to Steiner today how that many bloggers rely upon the work of mainstream sportswriters to launch their posts. For that matter, I understand job insecurity. I was the hot new prodigy on staff in ’89 – by ’92, there was a hotter, newer prodigy, and I was on my way to being marginalized at the ripe old age of 24.

But I expect reciprocity. If I’ve done a good job as an outsider looking in, I expect respect, not dismissal. First, some of the analysis done by bloggers is flat-out better than anything you’ll see from a major paper – and it’s done without the support system of a major paper, often without any renumeration whatsoever. In some ways, it’s harder work.

Second, while there’s value in interacting with the players and management of a baseball team, I can testify that there’s often value in not interacting with them. It can give you a level of objectivity that is often missing from mainstream reporting. And at a minimum, many kinds of analysis don’t require a locker-room presence, yet can be of tremendous value when done right.

…If there’s one thing I could live without ever hearing again, it’s that stereotype of bloggers working in their underwear from their parents’ basements. I mean, I’ve had it. I’m not going to sit here and let mainstream baseball writers, who spend, God love ’em, 2,000 hours a year inside a ballpark, tell me that I or my blogger colleagues need to get a life. We have lives, thank you very much. Many of us have day jobs – many of us need day jobs – and many of us spend our weekends with our families and friends rather than with A-Rod and Jeter, and we see a world beyond the baseball field. Not saying that the mainstreamers don’t – just that we do. Our passion for baseball drives us to write about the game, but hardly monopolizes our existence. If anything, we might have the perspective that insiders lack.

But don’t let me dictate to you who’s good and who isn’t. Judge for yourself. Just judge after you’ve read an individual’s work, not before.

It is overcast and flat-out cold today in New York. What to cook? A stew, a soup, shepherd’s pie, a lasagna, a risotto? Mmmm. While I ponder what to make, let me repeat that I think the Yankees will score a bunch of runs this afternoon. Chien-Ming Wang, the Yankees’ stopper, is on the hill.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

They said it was gunna rain but it never did. Instead the sun was out and it was a lovely, crisp spring day. Still a little chilly but the buds are on the trees. Some trees are already in bloom. So Emily and I had lunch at a cute Belgian spot in Manhattan and then walked over to one of her favorite places–the Container Store. Once we got there, I kept telling her, “You can’t stop us, you can only hope to contain us.” Then, I’d crack up. She rolled her eyes. Em calls me her Jack Tripper (Three’s Company is one of those shows that was one of her friends, that kept her great company when she was a kid). Then I waited for her to set me up with a straight line so that I could say, “That’s what she said,” my other favorite cornball expression of the moment. That’s a line I can’t say enough. It always cracks me up. Em puts up with me and groans more often then she laughs.

Emily isn’t exactly straight-laced but she is formal and dignified in public places. She is mortified if I talk too loudly, nevermind if I pull the old’ knock-the-merchandise-off-the-shelf-for-laffs bit. Her eyes start to bulge and she speaks in short bursts trying to whisper, “Alex, No, what are you doing, don’t–Hey, I’m serious.” Today, I went to a shelf stacked with tiny little white ring boxes and started knocking them over. I picked them up and when I went to put them back I knocked more over on purpose. I had her going for a couple of rounds of that.

I like tooling around town with my wife, we have a lot of laughs. She’s a country girl at heart who doesn’t have the nature for city-living. The crowds, the traffic, the fast pace. It’s not her. But when we are out together she can relax because I make her feel safe. I know where we are going and I am always watching out over her. I make sure to walk on her outside, so that I’m closest to the street. I keep an eye out on the subway car as she closes her eyes and rests her head on my shoulder. It makes me feel good to have her back and create that sense of security for her. Nice to feel like the man and to know your woman wants you to be the man.

After the Container Store, we were standing in the sun on 6th Avenue waiting for the light to turn. A Good Humor Truck was parked a few feet away, a hot dog stand next to it on the curb. A gray-haired woman wearing a black overcoat held a chocolate dipped cone in her hand. I made a yummy sound as we waited for the light. She walked towards us; the light changed, and we crossed the street with her. “Boy, do you look happy,” I said. She smiled, a look of simple but deep happiness on her face. “Well, it’s my first of the year.”

You’ve got to love the seasons. Speaking of which, the flu season is still hanging over the Yanks who lost again to the Rays today, this time, 6-3. Joe Girardi missed another game, Andy Pettitte wasn’t great (“I just didn’t have anything today, man”), Jason Giambi hurt himself, and oh yeah, the offense came up short again. A waste of a perfectly beautiful day. I’m not sorry we missed it. Anthony McCaron and Pete Abraham kept entertaining tabs on the game.

Tomorrow, the bats will bring the rukus.

One of the most exciting events of the spring has been the recent launching of the SI Vault. Talk about an embarassment of riches. Dag. To my dismay, the site does not offer anything close to a complete author index, making finding stuff a frustrating experience at best. I can only hope that this is a temporary problem, because it would be a real shame for something as rich and varied as the SI archives to be needlessly difficult to navigate.

Still, here are a couple of gems for you as we wait for today’s game. No telling if the rain will mess with things this afternoon. It’s warm and foggy this morning and the sun is even shinning here and there in the Bronx. I’m gunna throw up this game thread now cause I won’t be around for the start of the game. If they get it in, Andy Pettitte will make his first start of the year. If there is a delay, grab another bowl of soup, and consider the following bag o treats from the SI vault.

Come Down Selector:

A Diamond in the Ashes: Robert Lipsyte’s highly critical take on the rennovated Yankee Stadium (April, 1976).

This Old House: William Nack’s essay on the Stadium (June, 1999), and The Colossus, his piece on the Babe (August, 1998).

The Play that Beat the Bums: Ron Fimrite’s look back at the Mickey Owens game and the 1941 season (October, 1997).

Mickey Mantle: Richard Hoffer’s piece on the legacy of the last great player on the last great team (August, 1995).

A Real Rap Session: Peter Gammons talks hitting with Ted Williams, Don Mattingly and Wade Boggs from the Baseball Preivew issue (April, 1986).

Yogi: Roy Blount’s takeout piece on the Yankee legend (April, 1984).

Once He Was an Angel (March, 1972) and Tom Terrific and His Mystic Talent (July, ’72), two classic portraits (Bo Belinsky and Tom Seaver) by Pat Jordan.

No Place in the Shade: Mark Kram considered this portrait of Cool Papa Bell to be his finest work for SI (August, 1973). And while we’re on Kram, check out A Wink at a Homely Girl, his wonderful piece about his hometown Baltimore that appeared on the eve of the ’66 World Serious (October, 1966).

Laughing on the Outside: John Schulian’s fine appreciation of the great Josh Gibson (June, 2000).

And finally, He Does it By the Numbers: Dan Okrent’s landmark essay, you know, the one that “discovered” Bill James (March, 1981).

There, that should keep you busy for more than a minute.

The rain held out on Friday night but Joe Girardi missed the fourth game of the season anyhow with the flu. On the YES broadcast, Michael Kay reported that Girardi was at the Stadium, suffering in his office. Then Ian Kennedy went out and pitched something like the way his manager must be feeling. It sure wasn’t pretty. Kennedy had no grasp of the strike zone, threw seventy pitches, and allowed six runs off four hits and four walks in two-and-one-thirds innings.

His counterpart, Andy Sonnanstine, retired six of the first seven batters he faced before running into trouble in the third–everything he threw was up–when the Yankees bashed six hits, kicked off by a cheap-o right field homer by Godzilla, and followed by three shots off the outfield wall (Molina, Jeter, Giambi). When Alex Rodriguez scored from first base on Giambi’s double, he had a wide, guileless grin on his face as he crossed the plate. It was a small, isolated moment, one that made Rodriguez look like a little boy. (It was easy to take pleasure in his enjoyment, something that is not always the case with Rodriguez.)

The Bombers scored four runs in the rally and then Sonnanstine went back to the junkyard, pitching six innings in all and retiring the last ten batters he faced. The Yanks got some handy work from the pen in the young law firm of Albaladejo, Ohlendorf and Traber, keeping the game close, at 6-4. Then LaTroy Hawkins was beat about the neck and face by Cliff Floyd and his pals. Pass the Robitussin, son. The crowd booed Hawkins and chanted “Paul O’Neill,” chiding the poor guy for having the nerve to wear O’Neill’s former number (Hawkins, who according to Pete Abraham, is an all-around swell guy in the locker room, is wearing 21 as a tribute to Roberto Clemente). When Hawkins was mercifully removed, Cooter Farnswacker replaced him and quickly served up a three-run moon shot to Carlos Pena.

13-4 was the final. Nothing a warm bowl of Jewish Penicillin and a good of sleep can’t fix.

I have always been nervous about peeing at a urinal in a crowded public restroom. It is a leftover anxiety from childhood that I can trace directly back to my experiences at the men’s rooms in Yankee Stadium. Not that I can recall any one traumatic incident, but the overall mood of the place–loud, profane, rushed, pressurized–still makes me uneasy, the place filled with cigarette smoke and the smell of urine and beer. So I wait for a stall just like I did when I was a boy.

Last night, I went to my historic first game of the final year of Yankee Stadium. It is the earliest in the season I’ve ever been to a game. Some cherce seats landed in my lap the day before, and so here I was, in the “rattle your jewelry” section down on the field level, standing in a narrow, grey stall, trying to concentrate on peeing as I listened to a young boy crying hysterically in the stall next to me as his father, impatient and frustrated, tried to get him to stop. The walls felt as if they were closing in on me like the trash compactor scene in Star Wars, and it occurred to me that one of the benefits of the new stadium will be more spacious restrooms.

(more…)

Yesterday after work, I went down to the lower east side, between the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges, to meet an old friend for a bite to eat. The neighborhood is populated mostly by Asians, Jews (this is the land of the Jewish settlements), Dominicans, and, increasingly now, hipsters. Hipsters with money. Which is where my old friend fits in (as fate would have it, his apartment building is just two blocks away from where my pal’s grandparents first lived when they came to this country).

As I waited for my man in front of a playground on the corner of Essex and Strauss, I watched young Asian and hipster moms with their kids. I’m always intrigued by watching women with little boys. Sometimes, you will see women–mothers or nannies–curb little boys’ enthusiasm, their aggressiveness on the playground. But that wasn’t the case here.

One beautiful, but hard-looking young Asian mother pushed her son on a swing and occasionally looked at me warily. Another tall Scandinavian woman chased her son around a tree, and then led him to one of those jungle gyms that have stairs and a plank bridge and slides. She led the way and then waited for him to climb up the stairs. She stood several feet away as if to challenge him, but in a sweet, reassuring way. He then passed her and went down the slide. She followed, her long legs awkwardly bent like a stork attempting to sit in the kitchen sink.

I turned back to the street and saw a group of four boys, maybe all of 13 cruise down the street. The kid in the front, wearing all black, stood up on his bike, and cocked his head to the side with a cell phone pressed to his ear. He coasted through the traffic sign and his gang followed behind him. Just then, two Asian girls, maybe all of 10, walked past me. One of them clopped back and forth in that seasoned way of city kids, who look much older than they really are. This little girl, with absolutely no hips at all, actually had a switch, even though she had nothing to switch around. Man, these city girls are tough.

I listened to Slick Rick on my i-pod and stood in the fading sunlight. Old Asian women passed me, carrying transparent blue grocery bags filled with produce. I wonder what they’ll be cooking tonight. Behind them, a hipster with a takeout bag in one hand and a Whole Foods bag in the other, wearing over-sized sunglasses looked typically ridiculous.

Then a little girl, maybe 7 or 8, walked by. She looked up at me. She had a good shiner on her right eye. Her face was round and quizzical as she looked right in my eyes. She was wearing a purple jacket, red skirt, white tights with little cartoon characters on them, and bright red shoes. Like most kids, she looked like she was almost going to tip over from the weight of her backpack. She was holding hands with an older, squat man in a green coat. Just as she looked at me, “Mona Lisa” played on my i-pod and I heard:

If you see me walking down the street
And I start to cry…each time we meet…
Walk on by…walk on by…
Foolish pride
Thats all that I have left, so, let me hide
The pain and the hurt that you gave me
When you said goodbye…
You walked on by…

I looked on the ground and saw a little strip of white paper. A fortune cookie. I picked it up and it read, “Be tactful; overlook not your own opportunity.”

Tonight, Phil Hughes, gets his first start of the season, the first chance to take advantage of the opportunity the Yankees have given him. Jay Jaffe and I will brave the cold and be at the park.

Let’s Go Yan-kees!

Okay, so if you could go back in time and attend any event at Yankee Stadium what would it be? The Louis-Schmelling rematch? Reggie’s three-dinger game? Chambliss’s pennant-winning homer game? Which one of these?

Oh, and speaking of randomness, let me just say this: If I could go back in time and visit any place in New York City, I’d go to the old Penn Station and the Polo Grounds.

Finally, if I could re-cast movie history, I’d have Sean Penn play Ty Cobb, not Tommy Lee Jones. And while we’re on Ron Shelton, I’d also have cast Gene Hackman play the lead role in Blaze, not Paul Newman. But more than anything I wish Art Carney had gotten the chance to reprise his stage role of Felix Unger in the movie version of The Odd Couple. Jack Lemmon was good in the movie, but man, Art Carney was in a league of his own.

Unlike many of my colleagues I did not grow up reading the Bill James Abstracts. I wasn’t interested in numbers (I was given a copy of The Hidden Game of Baseball for my birthday when I was ten or eleven and didn’t open the book until I was over thirty). I didn’t read Bill James until about eight years ago when I inherited my cousin’s collection of the Abstracts. I still wasn’t especially interested in numbers (though is arguments were appealing), but I found James to be a wonderful critic and lucid writer (hey, I used to read Ruth Reichl’s restaurant reviews all the time even though I never intended to go to any of the places she wrote about, I just liked reading her). In fact, the first post ever here at Bronx Banter was about the Red Sox hiring of James.

Which brings me to the 60 Minutes segment on James that was aired this past Sunday. Anyone catch it? I thought it was superficial at best. The worst part about it was that it divided baseball people into two groups–stat heads and the people who go by their “gut,” by what their eyes tell them. In other words, the same, tired, old song. You would figure that 60 Minutes would be above this uninspired kind of journalism, even though they are a populist program. Billy Beane was mentioned as the man who brought sabermetrics to organized baseball. Nevermind Sandy Alderson, or Branch Rickey. Forget about Allan Roth. I guess it didn’t fit their narrow profile, which didn’t shed much light on the Red Sox or James.

Joe Posnanski has a good blog entry about the 60 Minutes piece over at his blog:

There were numerous silly moments, my favorite being when Morley Safer — whose first piece for 60 Minutes was, I believe, on Napoleon — made his statement about how Bill said there’s no such thing as a clutch hitter, and Red Sox Manager Terry Francona replied, “I’ve heard him say that (ed. note: very doubtful) but then I’d want him to be introduced to David Ortiz.”

Really? Does Francona really think Bill James is somehow unaware of David Ortiz?I’m always baffled when people say goofy stuff like this — when they go up to coaches and say, “Have you guys thought about playing zone?”* To me, this is a lot like hearing that a doctor has come up with a new method to perform a heart transplant, and saying, “Yeah, but have you tried that like thing where you have people open their mouths and stick tongue depressors on their tongues and stuff?”

*Roy Williams always had a classic Roy Williams-like answer whenever anyone came up to him with the “Have you thought of this” type suggestion. He would say, “No offense, but believe me, we’ve thought of it. Anything you have thought of, we’ve thought of. It’s our frickin’ job.”

Georged

Veteran scribe Peter Golenbock is writing a book on George Steinbrenner. Peter asked if I’d be kind enough to post the following request. Here goes:

Dear Yankee fans, I am researching a book on the life and times of George Steinbrenner. If any of you have any interesting stories about him, as fans, employees, or recipients of his generosity, I would love to hear them. Send them to petergolenb@yahoo.com. Please include your address and telephone number.

Yanks, Jays take two tonight…

The game was been postponed until tomorrow night. A major drag for all those fans who schlepped up to the Bronx and stood around in the rain. Now, they wouldn’t have wanted to schedule the series in Toronto to begin with, no that would have made too much sense.

This is the sixth Opening Day for Bronx Banter. Since 2003, I’ve often wondered what life would be for the Yankees without Joe Torre, and, more significantly, what’d be like without George Steinbrenner. In way, we are entering the new season, the last for the House that Ruth Built (and the good people of NYC rennovated in the mid-seventies), without either man. Torre has moved to the west coast to lead the L.A. Dodgers, and the Boss has been quietly removed from the public eye, replaced by his two sons, Hank and Hal. This is the end of an era in some regards, and all spring I’ve felt sad about the pending loss of Yankee Stadium, and the demise of the Boss (man, I never thought I’d say that). There is something really off about Opening Day in the Bronx when Bob Sheppard isn’t in the house.

Of course, there is plenty to be excited about with the team–from Joe Girardi and his staff, to the young pitchers, to the returning stars like Rodriguez, Jeter, Posada and Rivera. Still, I’ve found myself avoiding reading too closely about the team over the past few weeks. Cliff has done a wonderful job of charting the progress of the team during spring training, and there is no lack of material available (with Pete Abe leading the way). There is so much to read, in fact, that I’ve almost shut-down in an effort to start fresh today. I want my impressions to be clear and sharp. In order to do that, I found it helpful to step away, ever-so slightly.

I’m also hesitant because on some level, I don’t always like the person I become during baseball season: Neurotic. I get so wrapped up in the winning and losing of games that I have no control over that it impacts my sleep, my well-being, my relationship with my wife, you name it. I’ve enjoyed the winter break from the emotional rollercoaster. Who knows? Maybe I’m maturing…I know I’m far less knuts than I used to be (and maybe this is just wishful thinking). But I also know that the Yankees are the only team that stirs me up like I’m a kid. When I checked on-line last week and saw that the Red Sox had won their first game, I felt a twinge in my gut. Oh, man, here we go again. Then again, that is part of the reason why I love following the Yanks, because, rational or not, the games mean something to me.

Give me a couple of pitches today and I’ll be hooked–watching how much Jeter enjoys himself, or seeing Robinson Cano stroking a line drive into the left-centerfield gap, or Johnny Damon poppin’ one into the upper deck in right, or just admiring Rodriguez’s seemingly effortless swing. These and many other small moments, give me so much pleasure over the course of the long season, that they overwhelm my petty insecurities as a fan obsessed with the results. The play on the field, the injuries, the hard work, all make coming back worthwhile.

Cliff and I will be holding down daily coverage this year, with weekly additions from Bruce, Emma and Will. Hope y’all will fall through and enjoy it with us. (For starters, check out Roger Angell’s latest at the New Yorker.)

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Joel Sherman is blogging twice a day for the Post now. One of the most saber-friendly columinsts going, Sherman usually has something interesting to add to the discussion. Peep.

The boys at River Avenue Blues are doing some fund-raising for the Jorge Posada Foundation. Check it out.

Why were the Red Sox so successful last year? This picture from Rays Anatomy offers some insight.

Lastly, check out Eric Neel’s takeout piece on Joe Torre over at ESPN:

I expected him to be cool. I’d heard the supremely self-possessed Derek Jeter call him “Mr. Torre,” as if kneeling at the feet of an ancient elder, and I’d had Dodgers broadcaster Charlie Steiner tell me, with just the slightest hint of exaggeration, that Torre “is like Neo in ‘The Matrix,'” a man capable of moving objects in space with a supernatural flick of the wrist. But what I hadn’t quite anticipated is the way Torre’s calm confidence seems to radiate, seems available to those around him, like a campfire at which they might warm their hands. Some of that comes from winning four World Series rings; he’s quick to say his success buys him time and goodwill with people. But some of it is just this: When you’re with Joe Torre, you get the feeling — though, as a student of postmodern culture and a working writer in the world of sports journalism, I know such things are impossible — that he might actually be for real.

Last fall, the Indians, and the entire Joe Torre Era already seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?

This is why Josh Wilker is doing some of the best work out there. Lawrence Taylor scared me as a kid, so did MJ, and later, Pedro and the Big Unit.

Pat Jordan has a funny story about chasing Jose Canseco for a magazine profile over at Deadspin:

I have been pursuing Jose, like the Holy Grail, for three months now, trying to nail him down for a magazine profile he’d agreed to do in January, partly because, as his lawyer/agent had told me, “Jose’s on the balls on his ass,” and partly because Jose was trying to interest a publisher in his second steroids-tell-all book, which existed only as a two page proposal of typos that had yet to interest any publisher. This second book would be titled “Vindicated,” and it would “encompass approximately 300 pages and will require six months to complete.”

My pursuit of Jose began in January when I called him in California. His girlfriend, Heidi, answered the phone. I told her that I was writing a magazine story about Jose writing a book. “And a movie,” she said. “Jose is writing a book and a movie about himself.” I said, “You mean a screenplay?” She paused a beat, then said, “No, a movie.” I said, “Of course.”

Uh, and nice zinger to end the piece, right? One commentor on Deadspin said you could just skip the entire story and go right to the last line and that pretty much sums it up. Yow.

Did anyone catch the segment on Lenny “Nails” Dykstra on the latest edition of HBO’s Real Sports? Ex-ballplayer-turned-shrewd-businessman. It’s worth watching for the highlight clip they show of Nails throwing bolos at Dodger catcher Rick Dempsey back when he was with the Phillies. It’s also interesting to see how Dykstra looks and sounds like a troll, almost as if he’s drugged. (And if you want to get good and steamed, wait around until the post-segment interview between reporter Bernie Goldberg and host Bryant Gumbel, and dig how Goldberg cops out of telling the truth about Dykstra’s alleged use of PEDS.) Pat Jordan wrote a piece on Dykstra for Fortune.com back in December of 2006. The published version concentrates mostly on the nuts-and-bolts of day trading, but Jordan’s original (“The Dude Abides”) focused more on what it was like to hang out with Dykstra.

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Billy Crystal will suit up and play in an exhibition game with the Yankees tomorrow. It’s a frivolous, ego-driven stunt, that is being promoted as a good, light-hearted time for all. The Yankee players, management and announcers, seem to fawn over celebrities like Crystal, and, as we well know, stars like Crystal just love being around jocks. Maybe I’m turned off by it because I wish I was Crystal, being able to live out my fantasies. More than that, though, I’m embarassed by his need to fulfill his every desire. Color me a spring training Scrooge.

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